I’ve owned a lot of unreliable cars. Mostly in my unspent youth, obviously. Unspent as opposed to misspent: I didn’t have any money to misspend back then.

Four people have been killed on the M1 in just 10 months after being hit by traffic in a “live” lane (Image: Getty)

So kids like me bought our third or fourth or fifth-hand motor for today’s equivalent of £9.99p, had a mechanically-minded mate check it over for the price of a pint and off we went. Or rather, didn’t. The worst car for reliability I ever drove was also the one I’m still in love with: a knackered, patched-together “Inspector Morse” Jaguar Mk II, not in John Thaw’s blood-red-and-black but classic British racing green.